


layer

by pseudocitrus



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: F/F, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4182264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a certain smell that follows Yoriko wherever she goes — something that reaches whenever they walk together — something that emanates especially strongly whenever her short hair waves in the wind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	layer

**Author's Note:**

> just filling out my "touka x everyone" bingo card ♪( ´u｀)
> 
> hope you're having a good day!

There’s a certain smell that follows Yoriko wherever she goes — something that reaches whenever they walk together — something that emanates especially strongly whenever her short hair waves in the wind.

 _Perfume?_  Touka thinks.  _Or…what’s that other thing…conditioner?_

It’s strangely powerful. Like incense. Like flowers, lodged in her throat.

One day, she browses the health and beauty section of a department store, searching for likely culprits. But it seems that  _everything_  there — the powders and lotions and various things — is scented. Really, it could be anything.

 _If Ayato were here,_  Touka thinks, _he could probably tell me._

But he isn’t here. And she isn’t sure if asking Yoriko about stuff like that might give Touka away as a ghoul, or worse: make her look weird.

So Touka stands, and leans in again, briefly, pretending she’s adjusting her uniform’s skirt beneath her. Yoriko hasn’t noticed Touka’s whiffing this far. Or so she thinks.

“Maybe you outgrew your uniform,” Yoriko says, and Touka coughs and looks away and sits down, hard.

“Y-yeah. Maybe.”

“No, really!” Yoriko says. “It happened to me too! It’s really easy to change it.”

“I think I’m okay,” Touka mutters.

“I can go with you,” Yoriko offers.

“I said it’s fine. What’s next on the menu?”

This is just the right distraction. Yoriko smiles brightly.

“Omelette!” she announces, pointing at a little mass of yellow in the corner of the lunch box. “I tried a different recipe this time. It’s supposed to be as soft as cake.”

Great. Cake. Her  _favorite_. Touka makes a smile back, and arranges her chopsticks in her fingers carefully, hammering the points down on the desk to even them out. There’s only so much she can stall, though, before there’s nothing to do but pinch the perfectly-formed cube of omelette and —

And split it cleanly in half.

“Oops,” Touka says, “sorry,”  but Yoriko raises her hand and waves it dismissively.

“No, no! It’s fine! It shouldn’t affect the flavor.”

But the flavor doesn’t matter a bit if Touka can’t even pick up the fucking thing. It’s way too soft; it crumbles whenever she touches it. It takes less than a minute for Touka to reduce it into jagged shards, and Yoriko laughs.

“I-I’m really sorry,” Touka stammers.

“It’s fine!”

“But it — it looked so good before —”

“It’s okay, it’s okay! All that matters is the taste. Here,” she says. She picks up her own chopsticks. It takes her a single pinch and sweep to lift the largest piece into the air between them.

Touka blinks.

Those are  _Yoriko’s_  chopsticks. If she eats it, wouldn’t it be kind of like…an indirect…?

But…Yoriko seems okay with it…? Maybe it’s fine. Just another human thing she doesn’t know about. Maybe a friendship thing, or even a girl thing. Resolved, Touka opens her mouth and snaps it up, lips sliding across the chopstick’s pink plastic.

It’s strangely pungent. Like damp insulation foam. Like a slug, sliding down her throat.

“It’s good,” Touka announces. She’s fairly sure she is able to conceal her disgust, but then she sees Yoriko, with a stunned expression, her empty chopsticks still held out in surprise. Her cheeks are turning pink.

Why does she look like that? Did something show on Touka’s face after all?

…oh, no, wait — oh shit — oh,  _shit_  —

“Was I not supposed to eat off those after all?!” Touka gasps.

“No, I — it’s okay!” Yoriko says, seeing her expression. “I just — I was surprised — but it’s fine. Really!”

To prove it, she gathers up another little bundle of omelette bits and holds it up again. Yoriko bobs it encouragingly when Touka doesn’t move, and then makes a little cheering noise when Touka finally bows her head and takes it.

Yoriko feeds her the rest of it, and on the last bite, Touka takes a breath, and catches it again. It’s so strangely powerful. Almost floral.

_What the hell is it?_

:::

It’s not that she hates it. It’s just —

For years she’s walked side-by-side with humans, hoping they won’t notice the thick, transparent wall between her and them. Every time she encounters something new, it’s another little tool she takes in hand to chip away at the barrier. Clothing. Expressions. Opinions on food and various restaurants. These are all parts of an everyday existence.

Sometimes…

…well. It’s probably…no, it  _is_  stupid, to think of it. But sometimes she can’t help it. Sometimes, like with this scent, she can almost see fractures. It’s like her fingers are on a seam of it. Like maybe this time, she might find a door.

:::

Yoriko asks if Touka would like to help her try making macarons and Touka looks them up on the phone outside Yoriko’s door and discovers that they look a lot like miniature, rainbow burgers.

“What flavor would you like?” Yoriko asks.

“Strawberry,” Touka says, and Yoriko claps. It was a superficial question; she already has the ingredients for Touka’s favorite.

She helps measure things out. Yoriko’s parents are busy, which means there’s only one person for Touka to look out for as she surreptiously sniffs every bag, every bottle, even the soap. After surveying the living room’s flowers and a loose squeezer of hand sanitizer, Touka excuses herself to the bathroom.

More varieties of fancy soap — a candle — lotion. Nothing matches.

Yoriko’s room is right across the corridor.

 _No,_ she thinks,  _it’ll be too weird,_ but she finds herself glancing back and forth down the hallway anyway, and standing still, and listening hard. She holds her breath and only takes it back when she eases the door open.

Her eyes widen.

::

_Oh._

:::

“You okay?” Yoriko asks when she comes back, and Touka sits at the counter, as casually as possible.

“Yeah,” she says, adjusting her skirt. “I’m fine.”

They talk. There are shows — schoolwork — books — movies. Costume design, and visual effects, and the color and texture of the batter.

“You remembered how to do it,” Yoriko exclaims with delight as Touka rolls up the edge of a pastry bag, and Touka realizes that she did, somehow. Laying parchment, piping pastel batter — these aren’t things that she learned to survive. Yoriko is beaming and Touka thinks that she isn’t even sure that she learned this to live.

Sometime later, when they’re whipping the buttercream, Touka calls out, and Yoriko looks up to see Touka pointing indicatively at her own face. Yoriko smudges the back of her hand against her own cheek, and Touka shakes her head, and Yoriko tries again.

“Gone?” she asks.

“No. It’s still there,” Touka says. “I can get it.”

“Will you?” Yoriko asks, and Touka nods, and reaches out, and presses the pad of her thumb against the corner of Yoriko’s mouth. She presses — slightly, gently — and then brings her hand back and flicks her tongue against it.

“O-oh,” Yoriko says, and her cheeks redden, just a little. She scratches her head, and leaves streaks of sugar in her hair. “U-um. Did it taste good?”

It’s strangely powerful. Like incense. Like flowers, lodged in her throat.

“Yeah,” Touka tells her, smiling. “It was delicious.”


End file.
